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Orlando Weekly
By Steve Schneider
The more of Paul Devlin's films I see, the more I believe that every documentarian should be forced to work in professional sports before shooting anything of his or her own. A video editor who has generated TV coverage of three Olympics and a Super Bowl, Devlin brought his sportsman's eye to the world of spoken-word poetry in 1998's SlamNation. In Power Trip, Devlin applies his kinetic style to a topic with even less inherent visual appeal: the advent of paid electrical power in the former Soviet Union.
Since Georgia declared independence in 1991, the film teaches us, its citizens have had a hard time adapting to the idea that electricity must be contracted on an individual basis, not donated by a communist state. In the capital city of Tbilisi, the energy rights are held by AES Corp., a U.S.-based multinational with the atypical mandates to serve the world and "be the most fun workplace ever." There's little visible fun in AES' dealings with the Tbilisi populace, most of whom cannot afford the company's services and resort to stealing it. A whopping 40 percent of customers have an illegal line -- an epidemic represented in the film by tangles of illicit, potentially deadly cords that snake out of windows and across yards.
The task of normalization falls to Piers Lewis, an idealistic AES manager who has to ensure customer compliance while battling a corrupt government that dispenses free power to favored industrial applications as political patronage. But Lewis is not the film's main character: It's power (both electrical and political), and there's no better testament to Devlin's filmmaking skill than the ease with which he grants main-player status to something you can't see or hear.
Acting as producer, director and editor, as well as operating one of two cameras, Devlin again shows his mastery of sports-TV sensibilities: when to cut, when to bring in music, and when to pan across a static subject to imply movement. The gradual nature of social progress doesn't always suit his game-time storytelling structure, nor does it grant him the kind of sweeping denouement a Sunday-afternoon armchair habitue might expect. But if you're looking to be reminded how much excitement any filmed conflict can and should entail, Power Trip is a big event indeed.